Raylee, new in class that day; the quiet one, the shy one with black bangs and big eyes always looking down, sat with her small, grayish hands folded, her dark brown eyes straight ahead like a rabbit caught in a headlight beam.
“Raylee?”
Raylee’s thin pale hands shook.
Ms. Grinby got up quickly and went down the aisle, setting her hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder.
“Raylee is just shy,” she said, smiling down at the unmoving top of the girl’s head. She knelt down to face level, noticing two round fat beads of water at the corner of the girl’s eyes. Her hands were clenched hard.
“Don’t you want to join in with the rest of us?” Ms. Grinby whispered, a kindly look washing over her face. Empathy welled up in her. “Wouldn’t you like to make friends with everyone here?”
Nothing. She stared straight ahead, the bag of candy, still neatly wrapped and twisted, resting on the varnished and dented desktop before her.
“She’s a faggot!”
This from Judy Linthrop, one of the four Linthrop girls, aged six through eleven, and sometimes trouble.
“Now, Judy—” began Ms. Grinby.
“Faggot!” from Roger Mapleton.
“
Peter Pakinski, Randy Feffer, Jane Campbell.
All eyes on Raylee for reaction.
“A pale little faggot!”
“That’s enough!” said Ms. Grinby, angry, and there was instant silence; the game had gone too far.
“Raylee,” she said, softly. Her young heart went out to this girl; she longed to scream at her, “Don’t be shy! There’s no reason, the hurt isn’t real, I know, I know!” Images of Ms. Grinby’s own childhood, her awful loneliness, came back to her and with them a lump to her throat.
“Raylee,” she said, her voice a whisper in the party room, “don’t you want to join in?”
Silence.
“Raylee—”
“I know a story of my own.”
Ms. Grinby nearly gasped with the sound of the girl’s voice, it came so suddenly. Her upturned, sad little face abruptly came to life, took on color, became real. There was an earnestness in those eyes, which looked out from the girl’s haunted, shy darkness to her and carried her voice with them.
“I’ll tell a story of my own if you’ll let me.”
Ms. Grinby almost clapped her hands. “Of course!” she said. “Class,” looking about her at the other child- faces: some interested, some smirking, some holding back with comments and jeers, seeking an opening, a place to be heard, “Raylee is going to tell us a story. A Halloween story?” she asked, bending back down toward the girl, and when Raylee nodded yes she straightened and smiled and preceded her to the front of the room.
Ms. Grinby sat down on her stool behind her desk.
Raylee stood silent for a moment, before all the eyes and the almost jeers and the smirks, under the crepe paper and cardboard monsters and goblins.
Her eyes were on the floor, and then she suddenly realized that she had taken her bag of candy with her, and stood alone clutching it before them all. Ms. Grinby saw it too, and, before Raylee began to shuffle her feet and stand with embarrassment or run from the room, the teacher stood and said, “Here, why don’t you let me hold that for you until you’re finished?”
She took it from the girl’s sweaty hand and sat down again.
Raylee stood silent, eyes downcast.
Ms. Grinby prepared to get up, to save her again.
“This story,” Raylee began suddenly, startling the teacher into settling back into her chair, “is a scary one. It’s about a little boy named Pumpkin Head.”
Ms. Grinby sucked in her breath; there were some whisperings from the class which she quieted with a stare.
“Pumpkin Head,” Raylee went on, her voice small and low but clear and steady, “was very lonely. He had no friends. He was not a bad boy, and he liked to play, but no one would play with him because of the way he looked.
“He was called Pumpkin Head because his head was too big for his body. It had grown too fast for the rest of him, and was soft and large. He only had a little patch of hair, on the top of his head, and the skin on all of his head was soft and fat. You could almost pull it out into folds. His eyes, nose, and mouth were practically lost in all the fat on his face.
“Someone said Pumpkin Head looked that way because his father had worked at an atomic plant and had been in an accident before Pumpkin Head was born. But this wasn’t his fault, and even his parents, though they loved him, were afraid of him because of the way he looked. When he stared into a mirror he was almost afraid of himself. At times he wanted to rip at his face with his fingers, or cut it with a knife, or hide it by wearing a bag over it with writing on it that said, ‘I am me, I am normal just like you under here.’ At times he felt so bad he wanted to bash his head against a wall, or go to the train tracks and let a train run over it.”
Raylee paused, and Ms. Grinby almost stopped her, but noting the utter silence of the class, and Raylee’s absorption with her story, she held her tongue.
“Finally, Pumpkin Head became so lonely that he decided to do anything he could to get a friend. He talked to everyone in his class, one by one, as nicely as he could, but no one would go near him. He tried again, but still no one would go near him. Then he finally stopped trying.
“One day he began to cry in class, right in the middle of a history lesson. No one, not even the teacher, could make him stop. The tears ran down Pumpkin Head’s face, in furrows like on the hard furrows of a pumpkin. The teacher had to call his mother and father to come and get him, and even they had trouble taking him away because he sat in his chair with his hands tight around his seat and cried and cried. There didn’t seem to be enough tears in Pumpkin Head’s head for all his crying, and some of his classmates wondered if his pumpkin head was filled with water. But finally his parents brought him home and put him in his room, and there he stayed for three days, crying.
“After those three days passed, Pumpkin Head came out of his room. His tears had dried. He smiled through the ugly folds of skin on his face, and said that he wouldn’t cry any more and that he would like to go back to school. His mother and father wondered if he was really all right, but secretly, Pumpkin Head knew, they sighed with relief because having him around all the time made them nervous. Some of their friends would not come to see them when Pumpkin Head was in the house.
“Pumpkin Head went back to school that morning, smiling. He swung his lunch pail in his hand, his head held high. His teacher and his classmates were very surprised to see him back, and everyone left him alone for a while.
“But then, in the middle of the second period, one of the boys in the class threw a piece of paper at Pumpkin Head, and then another. Someone hissed that his head was like a pumpkin, and that he had better plant it before Halloween. ‘And on Halloween we’ll break open his pumpkin head!” someone else yelled out.
“Pumpkin Head sat in his seat and carefully brought his lunch box up to his desk. He opened it quietly. Inside was his sandwich, made in a hurry by his mother, and an apple, and a bag of cookies. He took these out, and also the Thermos filled with milk, and set them on the desk. He closed the lunch pail and snapped shut the lid.
“Pumpkin Head stood and walked to the front of the room, carrying his lunch pail in his hand. He walked to the door and closed it, and then walked calmly to the teacher’s desk, turning toward the class. He opened his lunch box.
“ ‘My lunch and dinner,’ he said, ‘my dinner and breakfast.’
“He took out a sharp kitchen knife from his lunch pail.
“Everyone in the classroom began to scream.
“They took Pumpkin Head away after that, and they put him in a place—”
Ms. Grinby abruptly stepped from behind her desk.
“That’s all we have time for, Raylee,” she interrupted gently, trying to smile. Inside she wanted to scream
